When I was in 2nd year Classical Animation at Sheridan a few of us were asked to go to London, England to work on what was to be the final year of Richard Williams' masterpiece "The Thief and the Cobbler". If you don't know the history of this film, there's an amazing documentary by Kevin Schreck called "Persistence of Vision" that explains why some call the Thief, "the greatest animated film never made".

The Thief was my first job in animation. I got the chance to assist a lot amazing animators like Dave Byers-Brown, Tim Watts, Alex Williams, Michael Schlingman, Philip Pepper and Steve Evangelatos. It was an incredible experience and a very unique career start. People came from all over the world to work on the Thief. We gathered each morning at 9:30 for rushes and watched in awe as the big screen filled with Dick's incredible vision of something unique that had never been attempted before.

I worked on the war machine sequence for quite a while
using mechanical pencils, a magnifying glass,
exact-o knives and tape!

I did a lot of work on these guys too - strange designs
and psychedelic flat perspective...